I saw that trending then I watched the video,
The Prime Minister tried to come off as compassionate by throwing the Premier of Ontario completely under the bus but I would still imagine that line will be the lasting take away from this tour.

It completely ignores the fact that the Federal Carbon tax which adds cost to the fuel source of the primary means we use to move around nearly good and service in the Country will also likely drive up costs but it was to be expected.

It will be interesting to see what comes of all this;

If he listens then moves forward with the same agenda I have to wonder if it does more damage than good.

I'm wondering if that ladies question was the moment progressives and liberals realise that maybe these carbon taxes are actually a bad idea and a vote loser but then again there so committed to the whole cause it be hard to get out of it at this point

the way I look at this tour , its obvious the liberals have a personally popular leader but there policy and financial management of the country is terrible , they have a pretty face people want to believe in but there actual government and policy is starting to stink and not living up to peoples standards

I wonder if this isn't the reason that the Liberals are so determined -- or are they? -- to get the 'electoral reforms' through Parliament before the next election.

They surely must know that the carbon tax is going to have consequences not only in the sense that it loses them an initial wave of voters, but also that the corporate economy will slow down. It will be a blow to industry.

And they must also surely know that there hasn't been any detectable global warming for two decades. (Isn't this the reason they now use the term 'climate change' instead?)

The spin stops here. It’s no longer up to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to tell us whether or not his Bahamas trip didn’t pass the smell test. It’s also out of the hands of his supporters and detractors alike.

Now it’s up to the ethics commissioner. Mary Dawson has launched an investigation into Trudeau’s trip and the travel arrangements surrounding it.

A copy of a letter provided to Postmedia reveals the watchdog thinks there is grounds to believe Trudeau violated two sections of the Conflict of Interest Act.

The first will be for scoring a free holiday from Aga Khan, the wealthy leader of the Ismaili Muslims, whose organization is a registered lobbyist with the federal government that has received grants from the government.

The second is that he may have broken the rule about ministers using private aircrafts. While Trudeau took a government plane to Nassau, he took Khan’s helicopter from there to the island.

Trudeau pledged to do politics differently and he’s sure doing just that... even though this probably isn’t what the voters had in mind. He’s now the first PM to be investigated by this independent watchdog.

The office has only been around for a decade, so Stephen Harper was the only other PM around for it. However for all the hysterical negative language we heard about the former PM, he was never officially investigated by anything.

It all started off so well for the PM. Thrust into the limelight thanks to his good name and great looks, Trudeau rose from third party leader to majority prime minister. A little more than a year ago slogans like “real change” and “because it’s 2015” made him the darling of Canadians and even the world.

How the mighty have fallen. Trudeau is now tainted. First, his fond words for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro left moderates at home and abroad scratching their heads. Now he’s in a conflict of interest scandal.

This all could have been avoided by checking in with the ethics commissioner first. But he didn’t. And now he’s digging in his heels.

We knew the honeymoon would come to an end. We just didn’t expect reality would hit him this hard.

We’re going to pay heavy for the PM’s klutzy approach to conflict of interest

Tasha Kheiriddin

Monday, January 16th, 2017

Are you a prime minister looking to get away this winter? All those Google hangouts and holiday announcements making you feel overworked? Consider escaping to Bell Island in the Bahamas! Privacy, luxury and room for your friends and guests! Helicopter transport included!

Cost: one investigation by the ethics commissioner, $500 in fines under the Conflict of Interest Act, several pounds of political capital, one missed retreat at Davos and unlimited cups of coffee on your BONUS cross-Canada tour!

Open wide the wallets, taxpayers of Canada. What started as an airfare-only trip for PM Justin Trudeau and friends to the Bahamian retreat of the Aga Khan has morphed into a costly cause célèbre — and we’ll all be footing the bill.

First off, there’s the cost of an investigation by Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson, to be taken from her annual $7.1 million office budget. This week, Dawson announced that she has “commenced an examination under subsection 44(3) of the Act to determine whether Mr. Trudeau has contravened sections 11 and 12 of the Act in connection with his recent stay at and travel to the Aga Khan’s privately owned island. I will also examine whether Mr. Trudeau may have contravened his obligations under sections 6 and 21 of the Act.”

Section 11 prohibits office holders from accepting gifts that might be seen to influence the recipient in an official power, duty or function, unless the gift is part of protocol or is from a relative or friend. Section 12 prohibits a public office holder from travelling in a private or non-commercial aircraft unless it’s a requirement of the job or has been approved prior to takeoff by the commissioner.

These sections matter because the Aga Khan is the founder and director of an organization that is a federally registered lobbyist — the Aga Khan Foundation. That organization received over $47 million from the federal government in 2016, as well as funds from Global Affairs Canada for various humanitarian projects in the developing world, according to Charity Intelligence Canada. The Foundation also will receive $55 million from 2016 to 2020 for Global Affairs’ Health Action Plan for Afghanistan project.

Even if these allocations have nothing to do with the vacation, an appearance that they do would be enough to breach the Act, since section 11 states that gifts that “might be seen” to influence the recipient are prohibited.

open quote 761b1bThis road trip exercise has nothing to do with ‘connecting’ with average Canadians, and everything to do with bringing Icarus’s image back down to earth after too much time spent hobnobbing with billionaire foreigners.

You can add to this the costs (which we don’t yet know) of Trudeau’s pan-Canadian ‘listening tour’. The PMO announced the tour on January 6 — oddly enough, just as his Bahamas vacation was coming under fire back home. “We see this as part of a concerted effort to remain connected to Canadians, at home in their communities,” said PMO Communications Director Kate Purchase. “The prime minister wants to hear from them how they are feeling at the start of 2017, what their concerns and anxieties are and what we can do to help alleviate that.”

Good grief. Didn’t the prime minister do that just over a year ago, during the federal election? And then just months later, on a CBC special? Did Canadians’ answers change between then and now? Is his memory really that bad?

Please don’t insult us. This road trip exercise has nothing to do with “connecting” with average Canadians, and everything to do with bringing Icarus’s image back down to earth after too much time spent hobnobbing with billionaire foreigners, in the Bahamas and at a succession of Liberal fundraisers.

What we’ve learned from this imbroglio is that the PM — and the PMO — showed a shocking lack of judgment in accepting the gift of a free Bahamas holiday in the first place. Commons sense and a cursory glance at the Act (or even the Ethics Commissioner’s website) would have told Trudeau that this was not above board. Case in point:

In 2015, Dawson took to task Dr. Linda Vennard, a Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) commissioner for Alberta and the Northwest Territories, for accepting a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates from representatives of companies licensed by the CRTC to operate two radio stations commercially branded as RED FM, including one in Calgary. The gift came on her birthday. You have to to assume it cost considerably less than a Bahamian holiday.

The Vennard ruling is interesting for another reason: It went on to say that she had only met these representatives a few times — and that for that reason, “a birthday gift under such circumstances is unusual and unexpected.” This, and the “friend” exemption in the Act, may well be why Trudeau keeps hammering on the point that he has known the Aga Khan since childhood.

“He was a pallbearer for my father’s funeral. He has known me since I was a toddler.”

It would have been very easy for Trudeau to ask Dawson for advice on the trip beforehand. It’s also likely she would have told him to stay away, based on a very simple reading of the statute. That’s probably not the answer Trudeau wanted — so maybe it was easier not to ask

I saw that trending then I watched the video,
The Prime Minister tried to come off as compassionate by throwing the Premier of Ontario completely under the bus but I would still imagine that line will be the lasting take away from this tour.

It completely ignores the fact that the Federal Carbon tax which adds cost to the fuel source of the primary means we use to move around nearly good and service in the Country will also likely drive up costs but it was to be expected.

It will be interesting to see what comes of all this;

If he listens then moves forward with the same agenda I have to wonder if it does more damage than good.

I'm wondering if that ladies question was the moment progressives and liberals realise that maybe these carbon taxes are actually a bad idea and a vote loser but then again there so committed to the whole cause it be hard to get out of it at this point

the way I look at this tour , its obvious the liberals have a personally popular leader but there policy and financial management of the country is terrible , they have a pretty face people want to believe in but there actual government and policy is starting to stink and not living up to peoples standards

I don't think anything will make them delay the Carbon Tax;
He didn't say that they needed to do better, he said it was a Provincial Issue which is technically the case but still utter nonsense.

The Liberals are still polling safely in super majority territory.

Some of that may have to do with the fact that neither opposition party with party status has a leader at the moment but they aren't hurting in terms of popularity.

Justin is still wildly popular despite everything around him the moment.

The tour simply appears to be about the Liberals marketing their best asset and pushing the familiarity of incumbency. Rolling up his sleeves to "connect" with Canadians and give the impression he is the leader of the middle class.

In Dartmouth, N.S., Monday, Justin Trudeau said that because his maternal grandfather was born in Scotland, he understands the immigrant experience.

In Kingston, Ont., last week, Trudeau was asked what to do if he got a spot on his tie — and he had a handy tip.

And, of course, in Peterborough, Ont., he forced his aides into some damage control when he blurted out that the oilsands ought to be phased out.

These are all part of what passes for the out-takes so far at the six town hall-style meetings Trudeau has held in Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick on his national ‘listening’ tour.

They are also illustrations of the potential perils of letting a political leader go before a few hundred citizens for an hour-long unscripted and unplugged question-and-answer session. For the Liberal Party, these sessions are a sign that they trust their leader completely in these kinds of situations and that even if there are a few verbal hiccups, Trudeau wins more points than he loses just for doing what almost no other federal or provincial party leader would dare do.

On the other hand, Trudeau’s political opponents are almost certainly gleefully building a clip reel of some of the odd things he’s said on this tour for future use at the next general election.

The Immigrant Experience: In Dartmouth, a 25-year-old man who identified himself as an Italian citizen complained about the hoops he was going through to become a Canadian citizen. Trudeau started his reply this way: “I’m a 10th- or 11th-generation Canadian on one of my sides but my maternal grandfather was born in Scotland so I do have some idea of the challenges it takes to come to Canada and has took over the sweep of history of Canada.”

Huh?

The grandfather in question was James Sinclair, born in Banff, Scotland, in 1908, who arrived in Canada with his family when he was three. He adjusted to life as an immigrant so well that he served as an MP from B.C. for 18 years, a career that had been over for 15 years before Trudeau was born.

The Trouble with Ties: Those who attend these town halls are not prescreened, no one from Trudeau's office or the party asks what kinds of questions they have, and it is Trudeau who seems to randomly pick who gets a question.

Some have asked what it’s like to be the prime minister. One boy wanted to to know what it was like to be the son of a prime minister. And in Fredericton, he was asked what he thought his daughter Ella Grace, just about to turn eight, wants to be when she grows up.

But one of the oddest of these personal questions came in Kingston when he was asked by a small business owner named Paula, “What happens to your neckties when you accidentally spill something on them?”

His answer: “Not a question I was prepared for so I have no answer to give. Uh. It depends. Sometimes a little soda water and salt gets out the stains. Sometimes I send it to the dry cleaner and sometimes, as happens regularly, my wife goes through my closet and, all of a sudden, my favourite old ties and favourite old shirts are gone.”

To which Paula replied: “The reason why I asked is because I’m looking at your tie and thinking it would make a fabulous dog collar.”

This was all broadcast live on national television news networks and streamed to the Web.

Riling Alberta: In the six town halls so far — all in eastern Canada — there has not been one participant encouraging Trudeau to approve more pipelines or accelerate development of Canada’s energy resources. In fact, it’s been precisely the opposite. Trudeau has been attacked from his “green flank,” criticized for continuing fossil fuel subsidies, approving the Kinder Morgan pipeline, and not giving citizens enough information about the Energy East pipeline.

In the face of that criticism, Trudeau presented arguments he’s made several times, saying, for example, in Peterborough, in response to a question from a woman from a First Nation near the oilsands in northern Alberta, that “We have to move in a smart way off of fossil fuels. We can’t manage that transition overnight. There are too many jobs and too many economic benefits to families who are working hard (in the energy sector).”

OK. So far so good.

But then he was challenged on his government’s approval of the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion, which will take Alberta crude to the Port of Vancouver. Somewhere in the midst of the long six-minute defence of that decision he said this: “You can’t make a choice between what’s good for the environment and what’s good for the economy. We can’t shut down the oilsands tomorrow. We need to phase them out.”

And that’s where it went off the rails so far as the likes of Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean and many other small-c conservatives were concerned.

“If you want to "phase out" the oilsands, you'll have to go through me and 4 million Albertans first,” Jean said on Twitter.

All the goodwill he may have earned with his rather length defence of the Kinder Morgan pipeline or of oilsands production -- you can listen to the whole thing above -- went right out the window.

Federal Conservatives on Twitter quickly fired up a new hashtag: #PhaseOutTrudeau.

At the end of the month, Trudeau will take his listening tour to open town hall meetings in Alberta and B.C. Those promise to be a lot of fun.

A month ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau received a warm welcome as he visited Calgary fresh from approving two new pipeline projects.

As he comes back to the city for a Liberal cabinet retreat and town hall meeting next week, Trudeau might have some explaining to do after comments about the need to phase out the oilsands in an Ontario town hall that prompted strong criticism from many quarters in Alberta.

But Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr — Calgary’s representative at the cabinet table — said Trudeau’s return visit highlights the importance of the city and Alberta to the federal government.

And Hehr said Trudeau’s actions on energy issues speak louder than his oilsands comments, which he said were simply referring to the long-term transition away from the use of fossil fuels that is underway.

“How can anybody here in Alberta say we have a prime minister who is not committed to this region? We just passed two pipelines. Why would we pass two pipelines if we didn’t think we were in a long-term transition?” the Calgary Centre MP said in reference to cabinet’s approval of the expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain line to British Columbia and Enbridge’s overhaul of its Line 3 into the United States.

Members of the federal cabinet are expected to arrive Sunday for a retreat that runs Monday and Tuesday. The town hall with Trudeau and Hehr will be held Tuesday evening at the University of Calgary, with hundreds expected to attend.

Michelle Rempel, the Conservative MP for Calgary-Nose Hill, said the cabinet retreat as “lip service” from a federal government that has not done enough to help Alberta as it struggles with a recession spurred by low oil prices.

“I think there is a lot of anger out here at his government out here,” said Rempel.

Rempel said Trudeau’s oilsands comments were a slip that showed his true feelings, describing him as overseeing “a package of policies designed to essentially kill one of the most important sectors of the Canadian economy.”

The Trudeau government’s pipeline approvals were accompanied by a rejection of Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway line. And the Liberals’ push for energy infrastructure has been coupled with a climate change policy that includes mandatory carbon pricing.

Mount Royal University political science professor Duane Bratt believes Trudeau’s oilsands remark has been overblown by his political opponents but it did resonate in Alberta.

Trudeau, whose father Pierre had a notoriously rocky relationship with Alberta when he served as prime minister, has made an effort to cultivate Calgary through numerous visits both in opposition and government, said Bratt.

His most recent trip saw Trudeau speak at a Calgary Chamber of Commerce breakfast and toured SAIT in December, while the Liberal cabinet held a retreat in Kananaskis last April.

Nevertheless, Bratt expects Trudeau to get a rough ride this time around, especially in the town hall.

Besides the oilsands comment, the PM has also landed in hot water over other instances on his current town hall tour, such as giving answers in French to questions posed in English in Quebec.

“These are politically dangerous activities because there is a lot of risk, a lot of land mines,” said Bratt.

But Hehr said the town halls show that Trudeau is willing to hear “the good, the bad and the ugly.”

“The prime minister has shown he’s willing to take questions on any topic from anybody. This is not a scripted exercise in PR. The prime minister is really getting out there and listening to what people have to say,” said Hehr.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his ministers will be in Calgary on Monday and Tuesday for a cabinet retreat.

Justin Trudeau and his ministers will gather this week for a cabinet retreat in Calgary, site of a Liberal breakthrough in the last election that will soon be put to the test in a pair of byelections.

The Liberals won two seats in Calgary in 2015 — the party's first victories in the city in almost 50 years — and Trudeau's team will look to take advantage of its time there on Monday and Tuesday to build on that progress.

Campaigns to fill the seats vacated by former prime minister Stephen Harper and Jason Kenney need to be kicked off soon. The deadline in Harper's Calgary Heritage riding is Feb. 25 and in Kenney's Midnapore it's March 22.

But the call could come much sooner than that. There is also a vacancy in Ottawa–Vanier after the death of Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger last summer. The byelection call there needs to be made by Feb. 19, and the government is likely to schedule the vote in the two Calgary ridings on the same day.

Though the Liberals are long shots to win either of the two Calgary seats, the party is in a better position to compete for them than has been the case for almost half a century.

The Liberals captured 33 per cent of the vote across the city in 2015, nearly matching the party's share of the vote in Quebec. The last time the Liberals posted that level of support or won a seat in Calgary was in 1968, Pierre Trudeau's first election as Liberal leader.

Liberals have struggled in Calgary

The 1968 election was a good one for the Liberals in Calgary, as they took 45 per cent of ballots cast — just a few points behind the Progressive Conservatives.

But that support dropped to the mid-20s over the next four elections under Pierre Trudeau and collapsed in the 1980s as the National Energy Program sank Liberal fortunes in Western Canada.

TRUDEAU
Under Pierre Trudeau, Liberal support in Calgary fell during the 1970s and then collapsed in the 1980s because of the National Energy Program. (Canadian Press)

Liberal support rebounded somewhat under Jean Chrétien — the Liberals captured 25 per cent of the vote in Calgary in 1997 — before falling again in the 2000s. In 2008 and 2011, the Liberals took just 14 per cent of the vote.

The city has long been a stronghold for the Conservatives. Between 1968 and 2011, the party and its predecessors never took less than 60 per cent of the vote. But in 2015, Conservative support fell 10 points to 56 per cent, its lowest share of the vote in Calgary since 1968.

Tough byelection tests

The Liberals captured 24.5 per cent of the vote in Alberta in the last election. The most recent polls in the province suggest that support has held firm or even grown — two polls conducted by Abacus Data and Forum Research in December put the Liberals at 29 or 32 per cent in Alberta.

The party posted higher numbers in last year's byelection in Medicine Hat–Cardston–Warner, boosting its support by 7.7 points in a contest won by the Conservatives.

But Calgary Heritage and Calgary Midnapore will be difficult tests. Harper won his riding by 38 points and Kenney took his by 44. These were both below-average ridings for the Liberals in Calgary. Of the 10 in the city, Calgary Heritage ranked as the eighth best for the Liberals and Calgary Midnapore was the worst.

CANADA-POLITICS/HARPER
Former prime minister Stephen Harper's seat in Calgary will soon be up for grabs in a byelection. (Reuters)

Still, the 23 per cent of the vote the Liberals took in Calgary Midnapore and the 26 per cent secured in Calgary Heritage represented the best performance by the Liberals in southern Calgary since 1979. The Liberals will be looking to build on those results, particularly now that the Conservatives won't have such high-profile candidates as Harper and Kenney on the ballots.
■Trudeau's 'phase out' oilsands comments spark outrage in Alberta

The byelections will also provide some indication as to the impact of a series of decisions and statements made by the prime minister directly related to Alberta's oil industry, which is headquartered in Calgary: the approval of the Kinder Morgan pipeline into B.C. but the rejection of Northern Gateway, the Liberal plan to put a price on carbon and Trudeau's recent statement at a town hall that the Alberta oilsands need to be "phased out."

It all makes the Liberals' cabinet retreat in Calgary nicely timed for the government. The prime minister will want to make sure he puts his time in Cowtown to good use

Carleton MP Pierre Poilievre came to the aid of Katula — the 54-year-old Buckhorn, Ont. grandmother who made headlines for her emphatic plea to the PM to not pile the carbon tax onto her as she’s already toeing the poverty line — and said Trudeau needs to as well.

“He asked her to come to his meeting and to share her story,” Poilievre told the Sun on Wednesday.

“She took him at his word and in good faith explained what people like her are experiencing. Since then, Liberal supporters have descended upon her with threats and online harassment. I think the prime minister should signal that kind of behaviour is unacceptable. That in a free democracy, the less fortunate should have the ability to speak without fear of reprisal.”

Poilievre said Katula’s story of a disabled personal service worker putting in 15 hours a day, paying more money on her hydro bill than her mortgage, and having a mere $65 in her pocket for food at the end of two weeks, struck a chord with him.

“She gave voice to thousands of people like her,” the Tory work and opportunity critic said. “I thought it was outrageous that some Liberal supporters would threaten her and intimidate her for speaking out. The Green Energy Act has led to tens of billions of dollars in overpayment to electricity, which have benefited extremely wealthy investors at the expense of the less fortunate.”

Trudeau’s press secretary, Cameron Ahmad, said the PM condemns any threat of violence directed at Katula, or anyone else for that matter.

“All Canadians should feel free and welcome to express their views and concerns, and that’s exactly what the prime minister has been encouraging people to do in communities across Canada throughout this tour,” he said.

Katula, when reached by phone Wednesday, said she would appreciate some support from the prime minister.

“I couldn’t even get a police officer to come to my house,” she said. “I think (Trudeau) should set the record straight. I have people saying I was hired by the government. He needs to speak up and say it wasn’t a set-up.”

Since the threats started pouring in following her televised appearance from the Peterborough town hall forum last week, Katula has had strangers saying they’ll show up at her house to read her hydro meter.

But she said she’s also received hundreds of positive messages, even from ex-pats living in the Netherlands, Sweden and Hawaii. In fact, she’s decided to set up a P.O. box where people can send her feedback.

“They can’t afford to live here anymore,” she said of the overseas Canadians she’s heard from. “As horrible as this (experience) has been, at the end of the road when it’s all said and done, it does give a voice to people. I bought my home with my rental property and that rental was going to be money to visit my kids (in the U.S.), but that money is going to hydro, so I don’t get to see my kids anymore.”

If the PM doesn’t stand up for Katula, Poilievre said it draws attention to whether he actually he cares about the poor.

“It raises questions about his sincerity,” he said. “He says he really wants to listen to people’s complaints, but then when people speak up, they’re threatened by Liberal supporters. If Trudeau is serious about hearing concerns from suffering Canadians, he should tell his supporters to back off.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struck an apologetic note on Tuesday afternoon as he explained his controversial remarks about the oilsands, but took a combative tone in defending his government’s record in the evening at a raucous town hall at the University of Calgary.

The Calgary town hall, the eighth in a series of events across Canada aimed at connecting Trudeau with Canadians, followed the end of a two-day cabinet retreat held at the Fairmont Palliser hotel.

The interactions with the public have come with a few bumpy moments for the prime minister, and earlier in the day he admitted he had messed up with a comment at an Ontario town hall where he talked about phasing out the oilsands.

At the U of C, the crowd of more than 1,700 was mainly young and mostly friendly, though Trudeau faced boos mixed in among the cheers as well as persistent catcalls from a handful of those in attendance.

But Trudeau said he was committed to Calgary, noting he had been to the city five times since he became prime minister in 2015.

“I’m going to keep coming back, my friends in the back row,” he shot back at the hecklers.

Trudeau faced a variety of queries, with issues ranging from support for people with disabilities to his stance on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

He also faced more hostile questions, with one business owner telling the prime minister “it’s almost like you’re fighting against business.”

A U of C student challenged Trudeau, saying he had taken away the incentive for success by raising taxes on the wealthiest Canadians.

Trudeau’s father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, had a notoriously prickly relationship with Alberta due to policies such as the National Energy Program.

The younger Trudeau was questioned Tuesday whether he was concerned that Alberta separatism could have a resurgence because of the economic downturn caused by low oil prices.

Trudeau said there is a need to pull together in tough times but suggested he wasn’t concerned about the rise of separatism.

“I’ve talked to a wide range of Albertans who are very proud to be part of Canada,” he said.

The loudest part of the evening came at the end as Trudeau faced conservative activist Merle Terlesky, who accused him, with the backing of a vocal cheering section, of attacking the oilsands and being either “a liar or confused” on the issue. But Trudeau brought a large part of the crowd to their feet as he touted his government’s support of the energy industry — and the need to take action on climate change.

Trudeau sparked a storm of criticism in Alberta two weeks ago when, in Peterborough, Ont., he defended his government’s recent approvals of pipelines by noting that “we can’t shut down the oilsands tomorrow. We need to phase them out.”

The Liberal government insisted that Trudeau had only been referring to the long-term transition away from fossil fuels, a point the prime minister reiterated Tuesday in a news conference as the cabinet retreat wrapped up.

However, Trudeau acknowledged his wording left something to be desired.

“I misspoke. I said something the way I shouldn’t have said it,” he said.

“We know that the transition off of our dependency on fossil fuels is going to take a long time.”

Trudeau said actions speak louder than words, noting that his government has shown support for Alberta’s energy industry by approving the expansion of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline to the British Columbia coast and the overhaul of Enbridge’s Line 3 to the United States, as well as supporting the Keystone XL pipeline to the U.S.

The Liberal government has coupled its pipeline push with climate change action that includes mandating provinces to put a price on carbon, such as the carbon tax implemented by Alberta’s NDP government this year.

“I have said many, many times that I will not run against Alberta, that I understand the jobs here are essential to the families who live here but also essential to our Canadian economy,” said Trudeau.

“People are happy to jump on words and try to make political hay out of it. I understand that and I certainly have accepted that this is the way this political world works.”

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